Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you have a question, chances are someone else has asked it before. Please check here for answers before contacting us for assistance.

Account Activation

  1. I’ve signed up but I can’t log into my account

    When you sign up, you should receive an email with a link to confirm your email address. You should also receive an SMS with a link and a code. Please click on the link in the email as well as the one in the SMS to confirm your email address and phone number. Once this is done, you will be able to log in.

  2. I’ve forgotten my password. What do I do?

    See instructions on Resetting Password

  3. I’ve logged in but I still can’t send an SMS

    After signing up, you will need to send some KYC information to complete your registration. Visit Account Activation to learn more.

Billing

  1. My sms tokens have dipped below zero. How is this possible?

    Messages to some networks with symbols like @ may be treated as Unicode which reduces SMS length by more than half e.g. about 70 characters per SMS instead of 160. This may make the number of tokens used to go up by quite a bit. As we can only detect this once the message has been relayed to the network, the system attempts to recover just enough from you to cover our costs and this may result in your balance dipping below zero.

    Also, if you have M-pesa Integration for Automatic Update enabled, then it’s possible for your tokens balance to dip below 0. This happens when your contacts are updated with your tokens balance at 0; you will still be billed for the contacts added.

  2. My message should only have taken up 1 token but consumed 2. What’s going on?

    This could be due to the reason stated above. Also, if you were sending a message to a recipient you have not sent a message to before, then an unsubscribe notice may be appended to the end of the SMS. This may cause your message to use up an SMS, hence an extra token

Contacts

  1. How do I add contacts to my addressbook?

    See our page on Managing Contacts for step by step instructions.

  2. I would like to have my addressbook updated automatically updated when I receive a payment on my M-pesa Till or Paybill. What do I do?

    Get in touch with us and send us your Organization Name, Organization Short Code (i.e. Till or Paybill) and Mpesa User Name as registered on M-pesa and we will manage the process of linking your M-pesa account with your SimpleSell SMS account

Messaging

  1. My characters left counter is less than 160 even though I haven’t started typing my message yet. What is going on?

    If you are using a shared sender ID (see How to Create an Account), the length of this will be deducted from the total characters you have available for composing your message. This will result in the characters left count that you see.